Objective ZED ALPHA OMEGA

On to-night's episode of Jeopardy!, a clue was given about a pair of animals donated to the San Diego zoo by Australia in the 1920s (or '30s). The obvious guess is koala. The contestant who rang in answered, "What is the wombat?" Jeopardy!'s host, Mr. Alex Trebek, informed her that she was incorrect, that the correct answer was the koala. He then added the admonishment, "Remember, Australia." Wait, what? Wombats are native to Australia, Trebek! The wombat is a marsupial, just like the koala, & native to Australia—Australia & only Australia. The wombat is native to no other part of the world, Trebek, so what exactly did you mean by "Remember, Australia"? In an instant my eyes were opened to the truth that had long resided in my heart but never quite filtered up to my magpie mind: Alex Trebek is my archenemy.



I haven't had an archenemy since high school, when I decisively defeated Sean Dale through the implicit threat of physical violence. I've rued not having an archenemy lo these many years. How did I not see what was before my very eyes? Trebek. Always Trebek. Smug, condescending Trebek. Of course! I will destroy Alex Trebek. I must. I don't yet know the means, I don't yet know the hour, but Trebek will be crushed beneath every last ounce of his well-earned comeuppance.

As I sat down to type these lines I recalled that I'd never actually explained the confrontation I'd had with Trebek when I appeared as a contestant on Jeopardy!; I made reference to it, but wrote that the tale would keep "for another time" (Wayback Machine). That time has come.

I entered "Final Jeopardy!" with approximately two-thirds of the scores of the returning champion & the other challenger, who were very close together. I was the only contestant not to have landed on a "Daily Double," which was vexing because the returning champ landed on one & then got it wrong. As I was standing next to him, I was screaming in my head, "Manuel Noriega! Who is Manuel Noriega? It's Manuel Noriega! Who else could it be? Noriega!" (The answer was Manuel Noriega. But I digress.) For "Final Jeopardy!" we were presented with a picture portrait & asked to identify both the subject & the artist. All three of us correctly identified the subject as Vincent Van Gogh, but only one of us, my fellow challenger, correctly identified the artist: Paul Gauguin. I guessed Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a shot in the dark; I forget whom the returning champion guessed. At the end of the show, the host & the contestants gather in the space 'twixt his & their podiums & chit-chat under the scrolling on-screen credits. This was when Trebek admonished me & the returning champion, excoriating us for not recalling the friendship 'twixt Van Gogh & Gauguin. I didn't so much mind the money I'd not won—easy come, easy go—but I am a competitor & had just lost the most high-profile competition I'd ever contested. My blood was up. The last thing, the very last thing I was of a humor to suffer was some pampered dilettante with a paid research staff (!) & the answers printed on notecards (!) lecturing me about what I should or should not have known. In that moment, any & all respect I might ever have had for Alex Trebek died. So, in a fit of pique I shall never regret, not in the slightest, I looked him square in his supercilious mug & said, "You should do this for a living."

Yet to destroy a man over a single slight would be petty & not a little bit mad. No, that would be simple revenge, an unworthy & self-destructive indulgence. I can forgive what Trebek said to me. But consider to-night's contestant. "Remember, Australia." She had named an animal found nowhere else in the world but Australia, but answered incorrectly. Was the sting of failure not enough to satisfy Trebek? She'd also lost points (represented by money, but not corresponding to monies to be claimed as a prize). Had she not suffered enough? No, such is Trebek's villainy that he felt it imperative to humiliate the woman by mocking her failure. His mockery wasn't even correct! His mockery was counter-factual nonsense, presuming as it must that wombats are somehow not as native to Australia as koala. So, a hypothetical defender of Trebek's craven & cruel behavior cannot even claim that it had a pedagogical motive. What he said to that woman was just mean. Mean & petty—& wrong, both factually & morally. To end his reign of smug superiority, I must destroy Alex Trebek. I will destroy Alex Trebek.

This drawing is titled, "Combat Wombat."

Code Name: CHAOS
The ultimately successful quest to be a contestant on Jeopardy! was code named Objective ZED ALPHA. Had I not been accepted as a contestant on the first attempt, the second, third, & subsequent attempts would have been Objective ZED BETA, Objective ZED GAMMA, & so on. Drawing from that same vein, the quest to destroy Trebek, to end his reign of televisual tyranny, will be known as—Objective ZED OMEGA!